n the realm of
sport, there were things he could do. An insane desire came upon him
to babble about his school football team. Should he ask her to feel his
quite respectable biceps? No.

"Never mind," she said, kindly. "I daresay we shall think of something
to amuse you."

She held out her hand again. He took it in his for the briefest possible
instant, painfully conscious the while that his own hand was clammy from
the emotion through which he had been passing.

"Good night."

"Good night."

Thank Heaven, she was gone. That let him out for another twelve hours at
least.

A quarter of an hour later found Roland still sitting, where she had
left him, his head in his hands. The groan of an overwrought soul
escaped him.

"I can't do it!"

He sprang to his feet.

"I won't do it."

A smooth voice from behind him spoke.

"I think you are quite right, sir--if I may make the remark."

Roland had hardly ever been so startled in his life. In the first place,
he was not aware of having uttered his thoughts aloud; in the second, he
had imagined that he was alone in the room. And so, a moment before, he
had been.

But the owner of the voice possessed, among other qualities, the
cat-like faculty of entering a room perfectly noiselessly--a fact which
had won for him, in the course of a long career in the service of the
best families, the flattering position of star witness in a number of
England's raciest divorce-cases.

Mr. Teal, the butler--for it was no less a celebrity who had broken in
on Roland's reverie--was a long, thin man of a somewhat priestly cast of
countenance. He lacked that air of reproving hauteur which many butlers
possess, and it was for this reason that Roland had felt drawn to him
during the black days of his stay at Evenwood Towers. Teal had been
uncommonly nice to him on the whole. He had seemed to Roland, stricken
by interviews with his host and Lady Kimbuck, the only human thing in
the place.

He liked Teal. On the other hand, Teal was certainly taking a liberty.
He could, if he so pleased, tell Teal to go to the deuce. Technically,
he had the right to freeze Teal with a look.

He did neither of these things. He was feeling very lonely and very
forlorn in a strange and depressing world, and Teal's voice and manner
were soothing.

"Hearing you speak, and seeing nobody else in the room," went on the
butler, "I thought for a moment that you were addressing me."

This was not true, and R